


Kickstart My Heart

by vextant



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Medical, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Humor, M/M, Minor Injuries, Steve Rogers' Motorcycle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2019-10-22
Packaged: 2020-12-28 11:08:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21135725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vextant/pseuds/vextant
Summary: Steve Rogers, an illustrator with heart-health history a mile long, signs up as a participant for a cardiovascular study because hey, free medical care and also money, which is nice since his actual freelance work isn't getting many bites right now. He's been trying to make good on it though, using all this free time trying new hobbies and taking better care of himself in general. For the study all he really has to do is wear a heartbeat tracker in his day-to-day life. Easy enough.Until he forgets to take it off, and that's how his doctor finds him out as a part-time vigilante.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cinni](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cinni/gifts).

> For the Captain America Big Bang 2019!
> 
> My collab partner was the wonderful [itscinni](https://twitter.com/itscinni), who produced not one but _two_ incredible pieces of art for this little fic. They are each absolutely delightful to behold, both separately and together! Both works are embedded in the fifth and final chapter. Thank you Cinni for being so great from beginning to end. I really don't think I could've finished without such a great partner. 
> 
> Some spoiler-free content warnings:  
> "Chose not to use archive warnings" = "Vex is unsure if the fights fall under 'graphic depictions of violence' or not"  
> Steve does swear sometimes. So does Sam, but less than Steve.  
> Fleeting mentions of various health concerns  
> Minor injury recovery

The clipboard that the front desk gives to Steve is piled high with paperwork. He's pretty sure he remembers the email saying to come 15 minutes early — he walked in the door at 25 'til, and it's a good thing too, because he's sure he's going to need the extra time to get through this massive stack of forms they've given him.

It's also harder than expected to find a seat. The little waiting room is a twenty foot by twenty foot square, about a third of which is taken up by the registration desk and the front door itself, and the rest of it is dotted by those uncomfortable plastic chairs that probably haven't been produced since 1978. There looks to be about thirty in total, every single one of which is already filled. Some other folks are also standing around and holding their own clipboards flat against the wall while trying not to let anyone else sneak a peek at their medical information. 

Steve finds a small piece of wall for himself off to the side of the water cooler. He makes himself comfortable cross-legged on the ground — between the amount of forms and his own personal medical history, this is going to take a while and he might as well settle in.

The very first page is a consent form. Steve's pretty familiar with these at this point, and kinda blows through it in the interest of getting to the more detailed, tedious stuff. It's a medical study, it's just like all medical studies, ie., we, the clinic, will give you free medical care and also money if you let us measure your heart rate and such, so on and so forth, here's a boilerplate legal document to prove our intentions are ethical. 

He's not totally blasé about it, he knows to scan for words like "surrender", "permission to use", and "bequeath". Only the second one appears anywhere, on the last page of the agreement — _ By signing this document, the participant has read and understood the terms of their participation within the Study _ , so on and so forth, _ undersigned further grants the Clinic permission to use their personal data without name or other identifying information attached outside of demographic measurement. _

That's fine. Steve initials every page, signs where he has to, and takes that first stapled packet out of the clip to set it down by his side. 

Next is _ Participant Medical History _ . He sighs. _ Please fill out the following to the best of your ability. If you are a regular patient of the Clinic, please enter your Patient Information Number (PIN) _. 

Steve lets out a small laugh before he can stop himself. If he could afford to be a regular patient here, chances are he wouldn't have had to sign up for this in the first place.

He clicks his pen a few times before starting from the top of the form. 

—

They give him a number when he turns in his paperwork. Not a Patient Identification Number (PIN), the lady at the desk clarifies, this is a number for researchers' purposes only. If he wants a proper PIN, he's going to have to go to the seventh floor for scheduling and new patient registration. The whole process sounds expensive. 

Steve thanks her anyway and trods back to his slice of wall in the waiting room until they call his number. Again, he thought he'd gotten here early, so he figured he could get away with a round-trip transit ticket, a there-and-back-again in two hours sort of deal. He glances at his watch and guesses it's not very likely now. 

He waits. There's a talk show playing on the television. Steve doesn't know any of the supposed celebrities chiming in on a scandal he's never heard about surrounding another celebrity that he doesn't recognize. Maybe the guy played in a movie he saw once? That can't be hard to guess since he hasn't really seen all that many movies. His mom used to say it was his "restless nature" that kept his leg bouncing, the same thing that his middle school guidance counselor called "a kinetic learning style". "Learning by doing", or physical activity, or whatever. Not very compatible with asthma if his grades had anything to say about it. 

But that could've been his vision too. He hadn't known he needed glasses until he was ten years old, and then they couldn't afford to get him a decent pair until he was thirteen, which is the actual, objectively worst year for any kid who's already small and sickly with asthma and high blood pressure and heart palpitations to get glasses. Thanks to the twin miracles of modern surgery and payment plans he's able to get around now without needing them very often. He still has a pair or two of readers in his apartment though — even though he's only 27, his body is still thoroughly convinced that he should be geriatric. It's not all that bad either. He really only needs them when he overdoes it on low-light reading. 

There's someone across the waiting room looking at him. He can feel their gaze, and he looks up to see another study participant dressed in tight jeans and a deep v-neck tee. They've got a short haircut with one of the sides shaved to the skin. When they comb it out of their face Steve can swear he sees a wink. 

He looks back down at his lap. It's not that he means to be rude, but all his bulk is still relatively new to him and he doesn't know what to do with the attention. Steve was a short, skinny kid, and then a tall, skinny teenager — although now with his new hobby he's been actually fit and even muscular for the first time in his life. It's very exciting and very, _ very _ strange all at once. 

"Alright, 222-dash-2-7, Roger?"

As with every number, the murmuring dies down for just a moment while everyone temporarily forgets the number they've been checking every thirty seconds. Steve is guilty of it too.

"Roger? Two-twenty-two twenty-seven?"

Oh shit, that's him. He rockets to his feet so fast he thinks he hears his knees crack and makes guilty eye contact with a bored-looking researcher in a white lab coat. As he rushes over he apologizes, "I must've filled the form out backwards. It should be Steve Rogers—"

Lab Coat leads him into a cramped examination room and lets the door slam shut behind them both. He doesn't say anything for a long while, just flips through the paperwork he's been given, back and forth, until he finally says, "Oh. Think I read the wrong line. Steven, or Steve?"

"Steve. Please."

The guy makes a note without looking up. "Have a seat, please."

With the way he's fixating on it, it's possible to think that the entire medical profession would collapse in on itself without clipboards. Steve thinks back to when his mom pulled long hours at the hospital, and then again when she herself got sick — in a medical environment, it's a safe bet to assume that everyone involved is exhausted. He tries not to hold that against the guy as he takes a seat. 

Lab Coat sets down his clipboard and blinks like he's just seeing Steve for the first time. "Whoa, you're a big guy, aren't you?"

He smiles, trying as hard as he can to not make it awkward. "Depends on who you ask."

"You work out?"

Steve gives a breathy little chuckle. Technically, yes, he does. "Yeah."

"Alright, Steve, I'm just going to get a few basic measurements and then we'll have you go in to see the doctor for your assessment."

—

Ultimately, surprisingly, Steve's selected for the study. He was convinced he was going to be thanked for his time and asked to leave as soon as the cold, sharp-eyed head researcher-doctor had asked him about his arrhythmia — which is only occasional and has always been that way.

Getting a physical letter in the mail almost shocks him, one with a number for him to call to set himself up as a participant. The receptionist that picks up emphasizes the flexibility of their scheduling, but his days are pretty wide open — it's unbelievable how much freelance work isn't going around at the moment.

—

Three days later he has an appointment with a Dr. Wilson. Steve secretly hopes it isn't the lead researcher because she'd been a little unnerving to be around, but he ends up working himself up about it to the point where his knee is bouncing again in the waiting room. 

It's much quieter this time. He actually has a seat, which is nice, but also it isn't because the little plastic chairs are small and supremely uncomfortable. Steve ends up scrolling up and down his twitter feed for twenty minutes. It's all the same shit, as usual. Bands and live shows that are playing too far away from him, conventions and expos he could never afford the entrance fee to, the same meme done the same way by four different accounts in a row. He knows that if he wants his timeline to be more exciting he should probably follow more people, but the actual process of evaluating new accounts for whether or not he actually _ wants _ to follow them — determining what Bucky calls the bullshit-content ratio — is incredibly time-consuming. Steve doesn't even know what new kinds of accounts he wants to follow in the first place. It's probably just going to end up being more animal videos. 

His name is called by a man with a lab coat and a nice smile. It's not the same guy as last time — which, now that Steve thinks about it, he doesn't know why he expected it to be, but the warm feeling in his chest is pretty disarming.

It's even more surprising when the guy offers his hand. "Can I call you Steve?"

Steve shakes automatically. The name on the guy's coat says _ Samuel Wilson, MD _ in a clean serif font. His grip is strong without being uncomfortable and his hand is pleasantly warm. "Yeah. You're Dr. Wilson?"

"Sam's fine, whatever's more comfortable. Come on back."

Dr. Wilson leads him through the tiny examination room and down a hallway of many, many doors. On either side there's also at least one closet-sized cutout where a cubicle wall has been put up, probably for some poor P.A.'s "office", but they go right past them to the end of the hall. Almost every member of staff that they pass has some kind of smile or nod for Dr. Wilson, and Steve doesn't know if that reassures him or not. Hospitals, and more generally medical professionals, were a pretty strong part of his childhood — and not in the fond sense. 

The office at the end of the hall is smaller, nondescript, and directly across from the head researcher's office. Dr. Wilson closes the door behind them. 

Suddenly Steve feels penned in. He doesn't know what he's doing here, he hasn't been to the doctor, any doctor, since before his mom died. That sense of time, of history, of visits day in and day out, his mom visiting him between shifts, Bucky sneaking in oranges like candy because anything else would push his blood sugar too high, and later, Steve's own visits with his mom when she got sick. It all stretches out in front of him as Dr. Samuel Wilson, MD walks around his big, big desk and takes a seat in the cushioned leather chair on the other side. 

"Steve?" Dr. Wilson says. "You can take a seat, if you want."

Steve nods and does, sitting down much harder than he meant to. "Sorry."

"No worries, just thought I lost you there for a second." The doctor spins around to unplug a laptop from a dock and a second monitor before swiveling back to Steve to face him properly. He sets to typing without even a glance down at the screen.. 

Steve's too proud to admit that he's right. "No, I just — it's been a long day."

"I hear you." Dr. Wilson smiles his nice smile again. It's almost infectious. "You wanna tell me why you signed up for the study?"

'Because money' almost, _ almost _ comes out of his mouth, and while that might be the truth, it's probably not the answer that they want to hear. But on the same hand it is a real, official scientific study — Dr. Wilson is probably going to be recording his answers as they speak — and Steve knows that science has to be based on truth, otherwise it isn't science. "I — you know, I'm an illustrator, so it's not the most stable market. Honestly, I thought I was going to be rejected outright, based on — well, you probably read all the forms."

"You mean the book my boss dropped on my desk when she assigned you to me?"

It's a joke he's heard in so many versions over the years that he's basically immune to it now. But he's being evaluated, so he forces out a small laugh. "Yeah, that's me."

Dr. Wilson watches him for just a moment. "I'm sorry, I crossed a line."

Oh, _ boy _. Steve seethes. The last thing he needs is pity, not when he's worked so far to get where he is. 

"First meetings can be stressful, you know? Especially in a setting like this. Not a lot of people like doctors, understandably, and some people have never been in a study before and don't know what to expect. So the game's stacked against us. I don't want my patients feeling like they can't open up to me. Part of my job is to foster a good relationship."

Steve looks the doctor dead in the eye. He looks relaxed, shoulders loose, honest, genuine. It might not have been pity in his voice at all, but legitimate regret. There is a tiny smidgen of a possibility that his own temper might've just jumped the gun. "No, you're … you're keeping it light. I can appreciate that."

Dr. Wilson nods. "Here's how it's going to work. Once a week, you'll come in, check in with me. We can set a regular day and time if you like, or you can play it by ear if that works better for you. Pay attention to your transport costs so we can add it to your check every week."

"Oh, that's nice." Steve doesn't realize he's said it out loud until the doctor stops and regards him for a moment.

"I know, right?" Dr. Wilson smiles, "We want to keep you coming back."

"I'm guessing it's not because of my sparkling personality?"

"I gotta give you some more chances to laugh at my jokes, man. Get some exposure to real humor."

"Wow," Steve chuckles, "You signed on to have some kind of captive audience for you to practice your standup?"

Dr. Wilson's eyebrows climb straight up, like he doesn't know if he's insulted or impressed. "Oh, that's how it is?"

"That's how it is." He shrugs and lets a small smile shine, unapologetic. Wilson echoes it. 

"Alright, well. Let's go through the rest of this so you can get outta here."

—

Near the end of this first visit, Steve is given a little bracelet and told it's a heartbeat monitor. All he needs to do is wear it as he goes about his normal life, unless he's planning on getting wet — apparently it's only rated for "sweat, not showers" — Dr. Wilson's words. If something out of the ordinary happens he just has to make a mental note of the time and what he was doing so that they have documentation for any unexpected data. 

All in all, it's nothing challenging. And hey, seventy-five dollars a week is more than zero.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > I got Steve's number by spelling out C-A-P on a number pad.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Right beside Steve's front door there's a closet with a secret in it.

Right beside Steve's front door there's a closet with a secret in it. 

He lives alone, so there's really no chance of anyone snooping unless they break into his apartment, and the secret hangs in the back behind empty cardboard boxes he's saved from moving in and buying large appliances, like that time his refrigerator decided to up and stop keeping his leftovers cool one day.

Tossing his shoes off by the door, he hangs his jacket on the back of a wooden chair. The rest of the apartment is pretty nondescript. He's lucky enough to have been grandfathered in to outrageously low rent on a one-bedroom rather than a studio — it makes him feel less like he's pretending at being successful, but he knows his secret plays a part in that too. 

Steve glances at the dishes sitting dirty in the sink. It's easy to see right from the door, since the kitchenette and living room take up the majority of the space, sparsely furnished with a sheet thrown over an old couch because he hates the actual pattern of the upholstery, a small table with two chairs, and a desk shoved up against the window. When he moved in he'd thought the sink was plenty deep, but now he's just regularly baffled at how fast dishes build up for even one person and no dishwasher. Well, him. He's the dishwasher. 

There's a to-do list on the edge of the desk, crowded with his chicken scratch penmanship and ignorant of anything resembling a neat, orderly line. Steve adds "Dishes" to it. The list sits next to what he considers to be one of his smartest purchases, an angled drafting platform that he can raise or lower based on whether he feels like standing or sitting while he sketches. His whole damn place is messy but the cheap plastic drawers next to the desk that he tries to keep his art supplies contained in is by far the closest to resembling a disaster zone.

Besides the drafting table, Steve's other smartest purchase is his radio scanner. It's sitting on his bedside table with an alarm clock perched on top of it, an innocuous-looking black box that's spent roughly the last year fueling his "fitness kick", his "training regimen,'' his "healthy new hobby". Except it's not really a hobby — Steve thinks what he does at night is important enough to be considered proper work. It's just work that he doesn't get paid for. 

On the inside of his closet is the large, sprawling map of Brooklyn and the rest of the city that he painted there himself. It started off rather innocent, just something to spruce up what's otherwise a pretty drab living space — he keeps most of his clothes in his dresser anyway — but then he started listening to the radio as he got ready in the morning. He listened to the news, plotted their stories on the map in his room, just something to keep his mind occupied while he brushed his teeth. 

Honestly, the radio scanner was really anyone's next step from there. 

He had a shit lot of else growing up, but Steve's got insomnia, a good memory, and a deep, deep aversion to paying for gym memberships. He's also old enough to have lived through that phase where everybody was suddenly, inexplicably super into parkour, and one of those people just happened to be his best friend. Steve, being a lanky kid with no upper body muscles to speak of, was an enthusiastic but consistently street-level camera guy. As a result he'd spent a large chunk of his teens following Bucky around with a camcorder, watching him flip off of walls and vault over park benches. So yeah, a part of what he does now is probably not-so-secretly wish fulfillment, if he's honest. 

There are some nights that he sits at home and listens to the scanner, hoping that something comes up in the next few blocks, but most of the time, nights like tonight, he foregoes it altogether. 

The suit that hangs in his front closet is one he made himself. So far he's avoided giving it a name so as not to cement his intentions too much — he's still new to this, and technically he could still turn back. Trash the suit, paint over the map, give the scanner to a Goodwill or something. 

But he doesn't. 

Putting together the suit was kind of an accident too. At first he just went out in street clothes, maybe a ball cap or something to keep anyone from seeing his face, but then paranoia started to creep in on him — he was wearing _ his _ clothes, Steve Rogers' clothes, the same things he wore to the bodega, the drugstore, on video calls, in client meetings. Someone could recognize him, which to his logical mind sounded ridiculous but the thought was still there. 

Over the past year, there's been several iterations of "the suit". At first he thought a Daredevil-type vibe would be best, since that's honestly where he's gotten most of this whole thing from, but the long-sleeved black t-shirt lasted exactly one night up against a wannabe carjacker with a knife. Since then he's needed to take it a step further. 

Steve bought himself an armored motorcycle jacket, plain black leather with protective plating sewn in. He ended up liking it enough to buy a second, blue this time, a different style from a different company that he could wear around in the daytime because hey, riding his bike in New York gets to be dangerous sometimes because people don't ever check their goddamned mirrors. But the black one is for nighttime hobbies only. 

He's got black cargo pants to go with it — one pair which, because he's too paranoid to go back to the army surplus shop he got it from, he's learned how to sew up time and time again. Steve's apartment may not have a dishwasher, but the building has installed its own clothes washers and dryers in the basement, which has significantly reduced the amount of awkward run-ins with strangers as he hovers over his laundry. 

After he suits up, he checks himself out in the bathroom mirror to see if he's forgotten anything. He doesn't tend to carry a lot of gear as a rule, nothing as serious as knives or anything, and certainly not his phone. All he really has is a small first aid kit, some cash, and the key to his apartment that he slides into a small zippered pocket on the inside of his jacket. Recently he's made himself a mask — but every time he goes out he waffles over whether or not to actually use it. It just seems like a man in a domino mask would be more memorable than a plain, average-looking guy like him. 

Steve digs the thing out of his sock drawer and puts it on. He refuses to look in the mirror again as he leaves and locks the door behind him. 

The night outside is chilly, which is good. He doesn't look forward to having to chase folks down during a hot, city summer night, but Steve supposes he'll cross that bridge again when he comes to it. 

He doesn't live in a great part of town, admittedly. Not anywhere as bad as Hell's Kitchen — that's for actual professionals, like Daredevil — but his neighborhood is dark enough that "sticking to shadows" doesn't mean much, because half the streetlights are always out. There's always enough stuff for him to do, groups of kids who pick through parked cars trying the door handles, folks who work later who just want to avoid trouble on the way to their station. There have only been a dozen or so times that he's actually gotten into a fight — most of it's cardio. Chasing off wannabes, that sort of thing. 

Parkour's not very popular anymore. Of course it wouldn't be, as soon as he's gotten pretty damn good at it. Took him a couple weeks to learn how to do that ladder thing, where you hook your feet around the outside and just slide down. The most important part to that trick, Steve found out, is gloves. But flips and stuff, all of that's pretty easy now. He's not going to do anything too wild, not while he doesn't have any health insurance, but mastering that sort of thing feels good. He can see and feel physical improvement — which is honestly something he never thought he'd have in his life.

Steve hears a car alarm wail a block or two over. He tries not to grin.

—

As far as the study is concerned, Steve is incredibly diligent about those first seven days. He wears the tracker wherever he can and only really takes it off to charge it or shower, both of which usually happen at the same time. Dr. Wilson emphasized the importance of wearing it during sleep too, so Steve does. Twice in the second night it gets caught on the sheets as he turns in his sleep and startles him awake, so he fishes out an old, unopened pack of rubber bands he'd collected during the Braces Era and uses them to hold the end of the tracker band in place.

He's feeling pretty good about himself as he walks in for his next appointment. He's got a lead for regular work from a game company Bucky knows down in Texas, and a couple commissions have trickled in online, so there's work to be done but it's not enough to take over his life — something he's extremely cognizant of. It's happened in the past, in college, that his life just became an exhausting cycle of sleep, eat, class, work, sleep, eat, class, work, sleep, class, work. Even after he dropped it still stuck around. He's only been shaking out of it recently. 

Taking care of himself helps. Checking off meals and glasses of water on a list on the fridge, making sure he gets plenty of exercise, making time for his … hobby. Sometimes he gets lost in a fantasy about making it a full-time job somehow, but it's definitely a fantasy, because Steve has absolutely no idea who he knows that would pay him to do that kind of stuff. Putting an ad up on Craigslist or something seems like it would ruin the point. 

It's nice to set aside time like that, doing something good for himself and helping other people at the same time — and while it's definitely the "helping other people" part that's most central to him and something he definitely never wants to lose sight of, the fact that he feels just so much better afterwards is a rush he's getting a little addicted to. 

A little addiction has to be fine, right? It's not like it's alcohol or other drugs. It's just a hobby. But damn if all those people smiling in relief and thanking him afterwards isn't the most validating thing. 

Dr. Wilson is pretty quick to call him back. Steve gets a little finger clip while he gets his blood pressure taken — the doctor must see him pointedly not looking at the number when he steps on the scale, and Steve is grateful when he doesn't say anything about it out loud.

The office is more freezing than last time. Steve can feel the chill of the leather chair through his jeans, but then he notices Dr. Wilson's thick sweater under his white coat and it clicks. Some people are like that, he supposes — would rather it be colder so they can layer up, rather than wearing a normal human amount of clothes for the temperature it already is. Steve's always preferred the heat himself, and it's a nice warm day outside so he's got on a thin t-shirt that was probably the wrong choice for this visit. He'll have to remember to bring a jacket next week. 

"So, Steve," Dr. Wilson starts, already typing away on his computer, "How was your week?"

He thinks back and chews over everything that's happened since last Tuesday. It's only when Dr. Wilson's stopped typing that he realizes he's probably been keeping quiet for too long. "It was pretty standard, I think?" Steve leans back in his chair a little bit, thinking through if there was anything out of the ordinary. "Yeah, it was just a normal week. Got a couple commissions."

Immediately, he bites down on any other personal details — the guy's just trying to collect data, he probably doesn't have any desire to know anything about Steve's personal life. 

"Happy to hear that." Dr. Wilson smiles, that kind, gap-toothed smile that makes Steve wonder why he's a cardiovascular … uh, specialist, and not a pediatrician or something. He'd probably be great with kids. "You said you work out?"

Again, it's technically true. In a way. He doesn't ever set foot in a gym or anything, but he manages to fit it all in anyway. Strength. Agility. Cardio. You name it, it's all definitely a part of the routine. "Yeah."

"Four times a week?"

"It was a stressful week."

Steve can tell the good doctor is trying to get at something. He has to tread carefully here, because while he's got a good portion of the local populace on his side, he doesn't think his nighttime hobby would fly very well with, say … law enforcement. Or a court. Doctors are probably mandated reporters, too, and while Steve's pretty sure he doesn't actually fall under that category, he thinks it's probably best to play it safe.

"Well, it's showin', for sure. I'm glad you're working on you." Dr. Wilson looks him dead in the eye. "I'm just a little worried about your heart, though. It's part of my job."

He steels himself in the leather chair, trying to remember all the fitness terms he looked up online in case he ever needed to use them. Calistenics. Push muscles, pull muscles. Activating the core. What's the thing, the really intense— it's high intensity, but in super short bursts? Long workouts with lots of concentrated activity. He can remember calistenics but not whatever that acronym is. 

Steve has to be the world's worst meathead. He clears his throat a little. "What d'you mean?"

"You got another M.D. or somebody working with you on this regimen, maybe some kind of professional support, like a trainer, or is it just—"

"No, yeah, it's mostly just me." Oh, no, shit, he's said it too fast, he's cut him right off. 

To his credit, Dr. Wilson doesn't look offended, and only one of his eyebrows raise in a kind of half-surprise. "Okay. I'm not trying to grill you, promise. There's nothing wrong with going it on your own, especially not with your kind of progress. But given your history—"

Steve snaps a little bit. "Given my _ history _, what?"

Dr. Wilson takes a short, deep breath. He folds his hands in his lap and locks those big brown eyes on Steve's. "Steve, man, I just don't want you to give yourself a heart attack."

The words hang in the air, heavy and cold, colder than the fresh breeze that strikes the side of Steve's face when the air conditioner kicks back on.

"I'm not trying to scare you," Wilson says with sincerity in his eyes, "You seem like the kind of guy who might have some trouble stopping what you start."

That hits close, closer than Steve expected it to. He debates for just a split second on whether or not he should tell the whole truth, consequences be damned. It's very tempting. Wilson seems open-minded enough that at the end of the whole thing he might even be on Steve's side. 

But the whole truth is dangerous. Telling someone like Wilson, someone whose job and specifically whose relationship to Steve is built on documentation and data and evidence, could unravel the part of his life he only gets to have at night, the part he's woven piece by piece like a messy, amateur tapestry. It's not much, but he's making a real difference in his neighborhood, in his city, in the people that he meets. That's what keeps him going, and that's why he needs to keep it close to his chest. 

"You wanna tell me about your—" Wilson angles his laptop screen, "—what looks like about a 110-minute workout on Friday night? Looks like you got two solid blocks of cardio in."

Steve notices that he's gripping the arms of his chair really, really tightly. He looks down at the little black bracelet on his left wrist like it's betrayed him. 

Honestly, truly, he wishes he'd thought through the workout lie a little better before he'd signed up. On a grander scale, he wishes he didn't need the money at all. 

"I just need something to put in the box, Steve." Wilson hesitates, but gives a little chuckle. "You can leave out the more sordid details."

Steve sits up. There's something about the way Wilson says it that makes him not answer right away — and while Steve's the first to admit that he's not the best with five-dollar words in the first place, the little quirk at the corner of Wilson's mouth when he says 'sordid' is enough to catch his attention. Workouts, to Steve's general knowledge, aren't considered sordid. But there's a workout-adjacent activity that he's pretty sure Wilson's trying to imply while still maintaining some kind of professional boundary. 

"Is there—?" Steve stops himself, thinking about how best he can parse out this next question to see if his assumption about Wilson's assumption is correct. "Is there a place I log in or something to see my own readings, or are those confidential?"

"You know, we actually talked about a patient portal. I thought, with all those fitness trackers and everything out, that people would be in the habit of getting to see their own data. But you're right, the powers that be decided there was a big risk of a breach of some kind of confidentiality or another. If it gets stored online, it's vulnerable, you know how it goes."

"Oh." Shit, that throws his plan out the window. He thought that if he'd be able to see them, he'd have a much better chance at coming up with believable details. It's not like he brings a stopwatch or something with him when he … _ steps out _ for the night. 

"I can show you yours though, here." Wilson taps at a couple of keys and flips the laptop around. It's a fullscreen window made up of neat white boxes outlined in grey — stretching across the top is a line chart of average heart rate over time, and below it there's the two vitals check-ups he's gotten so far, calculating an average blood pressure, resting heart rate, et cetera. The average seems kind of useless now, but Steve assumes it gets more useful as he gets more weeklies under his belt. At the top there's not even a name, but his date of birth, height and weight next to a large dark grey **776**.

Steve sits back in his chair, satisfied with his ability to change the subject. "Lucky number, huh?"

"Huh?" Turning the laptop back around, Wilson laughs. "Yeah, I bet my boss did it on purpose when she saw your birthday. She thinks she's funny."

"If her jokes are anything like yours, I'll bet she's a real hoot."

"That's what you're going with? How old are you, man?"

"You literally have my full birthdate right in front of you."

"I meant it like, hey, just so you know, your vocabulary is twice the age you gave me on your sign-up sheet."

"It's a pre-existing condition."

It gets a full laugh, and after a beat Steve's own chuckle grows to a laugh too. 

Maybe in another dimension or something there's a world where he and Dr. Wilson could get along. Be friends, even. Maybe there's another world where Steve doesn't have to worry about money — but he's pretty sure capitalism is a universal evil. 

He wonders if Wilson goes by Samuel, or just Sam. To Steve he looks much more like a Sam. If Bucky were here he'd tell him to shoot his shot and that there's no harm in asking, but Steve is secretly quite okay with the fact that Bucky's in Texas and therefore not available to pressure him into flirting with his doctor.

"Hey, no offense Steve, but really. What do I write in my little box here?" 

That snaps him out of it like a puff of hot air. Steve blinks, not entirely sure he trusts whatever lie is brewing on the tip of his tongue. "What do you mean?"

Dr. Wilson regards him a second with what looks a lot like suspicion. After a beat, he sighs. "Tell me a little bit about your workouts. I just need some kind of documentation for readings this intense."

"I, uh—" Shit. There's a row of binders on a shelf behind Wilson's head, all neatly lined up and clearly labelled. Steve doesn't know what any of them mean. He can hear the hum of the air conditioner from the window. "I'm trying to push myself. Training. I wanna ... do a triathlon."

Steve nods, like that'll somehow retroactively make his answer seem more confident. 

Dr. Wilson starts to type. It's hesitant at first, and then faster Steve's not sure if he buys it or not until he says, "That tracks. Exercise at night works out better for a lot of people. You a night owl?"

Abso-fucking-lutely not. Without an alarm, he will wake up at 5:45 on the dot, every morning. He doesn't really have a sleep schedule as much as takes irregular naps to make his time seem more structured than it is. That's the insomnia, or so Steve thinks — whatever it is, it should've been in his dictionary of a health history somewhere. "Not exactly."

"Interesting." Wilson keeps typing. His face is alarmingly neutral. Just as Steve is wondering what he can say to get him to turn his screen around again, he drags his left hand to the bottom of the keyboard. Steve watches him hit Ctrl+S and lace his fingers together. "Anything else you want me to know?"

"No, I think that's everything." Steve has resolved to start "forgetting" the tracker when he goes out. Maybe there's a way to make it read a consistent, regular heartbeat and not whatever it looks like when he chases down stolen wallets.

Wilson nods. "See you next week, Steve. Thanks for coming in."

Steve nods and shows himself out. "See you next week."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case anyone's curious or wanted to confirm their suspicions I imagine that the head researcher is Natasha.
> 
> Also, this fic took me down a weeklong rabbit hole of parkour videos, so there's that too.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a Friday night at three in the morning — technically Saturday — when Steve's scanner wails, startling him out of a light sleep. Whoever's talking sounds panicked. He's groggy at first, having only fallen asleep three or four hours before, and he can't exactly make out what's being said. 
> 
> What he does hear is _shots fired_.

It's a Friday night at three in the morning — technically Saturday — when Steve's scanner wails, startling him out of a light sleep. Whoever's talking sounds panicked. He's groggy at first, having only fallen asleep three or four hours before, and he can't exactly make out what's being said. 

What he does hear is  _ shots fired _ . 

Steve suits up as quick as he can. His hands shake a little as he tries to zip up the jacket, he's focused on the painted map, listening for a location, a direction, anything. 

The dispatcher gets on the line. He's lacing up his boots as she briefs the squad being called in. Steve has to glance at the cheatsheet he's written for the numbered codes.  B&E, shots fired. Ambulance requested. Two suspects, separated, both fleeing by foot. Blockades requested. Steve writes their locations on the back of his hand in permanent marker. 

He doesn't need the mask this time. Instead, he takes his helmet. 

As he races down the stairs to the garage, he doesn't even remember if he's locked his door. It doesn't matter, though. He slips his helmet on and fires up his bike.  The Harley is absolutely not a performance vehicle, but it's faster than a bicycle and thinner than a car. His heart is beating fast, from the excitement, from the worry, from the anxiety. In between beats he has a realization.

Steve flips the kickstand down again and tears the plate off the back of his bike. He'll figure out putting it back on later. 

As he zips up the ramp and out onto the streets, he tries to sort out his racing thoughts and pin some priorities to the very top. What exactly is he trying to do here? If he outright chases a known suspect, the cops won't have any clue what side he's on. If he manages to  _ catch  _ one of the suspects, which is unlikely but, Steve hopes, possible, that's still going to be some kind of face-to-face with law enforcement. He tells himself to keep his helmet on at all costs. 

_ All costs _ . That's pretty dramatic, even for him. 

He glances down at his hand for a location and makes a sharp turn to head that way. Steel-toe boots were a good call. 

Thanks to the map he's built in his head and the activity he heard on the scanner before dashing out, he's got a vague idea of where he needs to go in order to intercept where he thinks one of the runners is going to be. Steve's lived here all his life — this city is one of the things he knows best, possibly better than himself. Hopefully the guy ends up having a phone or something, this is going to be much easier if Steve can lay him out somewhere for the cops to find after Steve himself is long gone. The less direct contact the better. 

It's easy enough to weave through the traffic, but the bike is loud enough that it's hard for him to listen for anything else. Steve worries it might end up drowning out the footsteps he so needs to hear. 

He turns down a side street — empty except for parked cars and rotting garbage. And the idling car at the end of it, passenger side door open. 

That's pretty suspicious. 

Steve knows the driver can probably hear him but he slows to a stop anyway, planting his feet on the ground on either side. He doesn't want to fully park or shut the engine off. That seems like just about the stupidest idea he could have right now. 

He just needs to see what happens. 

Sure enough, when the bike is stopped, he hears heavy footsteps hurrying down the stairs in a building to his right — a door bursts open, a figure in black stumbling as they dash to the waiting car and dive in. 

The door slams shut and the tires screech as the car tears away.

Steve's heart rabbits in his chest at the promise of adrenaline and he kicks off. 

New York City was built for people, not cars. Chasing a vehicle that he already has in his sights seems much easier than trying to find one person. 

They're leading him to bigger, broader avenues. Fine. Let them. He weaves in between the relatively few cars actually on the roads at this hour and nearly gets clipped by a bus trying to make a wide turn. 

"Sorry!" He shouts over his shoulder. Then he realizes there's no way for them to have heard, because of the helmet. Instead he tries to give a cheerful but apologetic wave — Steve sees in his rearview that the driver has taken both hands off the wheel to give him the bird. 

Honestly? He deserves that.

When he looks back in front of him, he notices that he's been riding the line. Right ahead of him, there's a car stopped. It's parked sideways and blocking both lanes — what the  _ hell _ — and he's coming up on it too fast — he squeezes the brakes as hard as he can. 

Something pops. Steve loses control of the bike and goes tumbling — he barely remembers to draw his leg up to keep it from getting crushed. He rolls into something warm, wet, and sticky — trash? — and it takes longer than it should to register that he's actually alive. 

"Shit. Did you get him?" Someone says from the direction of the parked car.   
  
"Hope so," says another voice, harsh but quiet, "You think he was a cop? I'd rather it be a cop."

"Shut up, let's go. Boss says they got it."

A car door slams and the engine starts back up. Steve takes a deep breath before working his way up one step at a time. To his knees, one foot up, two feet up — whoa, too fast. He nearly loses his balance and ends up leaning heavy on an old metal trash can. It stinks, even through the helmet. 

The car's getting away.

Steve doesn't think — well, he does, but only to the extent of  _ the car's getting away _ and the more specific  _ gotta stop the car from getting away _ , and he grabs the nearest thing he can and hurls it.

In a stroke of blind luck, the trash can lid digs into the wheel well of the front tire. It squeals against the metal, rubber burning, before it pops under the strain. Then the whole car jerks — the tail swings wide and it screeches its way forward. It gets about ten feet before it barrels right into a newsstand. 

Steve chuckles to himself. It makes his chest hurt a little.

He takes hesitant steps towards the car. The engine is steaming. Steve doesn't know enough about cars to accurately determine the level of danger, but he steps closer anyway. Both the helmet and his armored jacket should protect him well enough. He just has to remember not to touch anything, as he's forgotten his gloves at home in his eagerness to get out of the door. 

The guy on the driver's side of the car isn't moving. Steve winces at the realization as guilt starts to pool in his stomach, but then the guy jerks and his chest starts to rise and fall in relative ease and Steve suddenly notices that there's only one person in the car. 

The other guy comes out of nowhere, launching himself at Steve from the ground like a feral rocket — Steve spins, catching his full weight and goes stumbling back into the car. The window cracks under his shoulders as the wind's knocked out of him, the guy's scrambling to keep a handful of Steve's jacket and rears back with a closed fist. There's blood on his face. He seems to be as much holding himself up and he's trying to hold Steve still, so Steve drives a hit into the guy's unprotected stomach and sidesteps the retaliation. 

With one hand Steve grabs the guy by the back of the neck and holds him arms-length away as he wrenches the backseat door open, tosses the guy in, and closes it. Steve reaches through the broken window and locks the car door — the guy is sprawled on the backseat, groaning, and doesn't altogether seem to be aware of Steve still being there at all. 

He's glad they're both alive but he's wasted enough time here. Soon enough somebody's going to call an ambulance, hopefully somebody already has, but he'll make sure to call the emergency line once he's out of the area. 

Far-away sirens start to slide in on the wind as Steve gingerly lifts his injured bike off its side. It … does not look good. The front tire's shredded. He's not sure he's got enough paint to cover all the scratches, and to be honest he's not entirely sure he's got all the knowledge required to make the repairs himself. He feels the dollar signs weighing on him. Brief, sharp pain flares in his chest and his left ankle. 

Also not good, but truth be told he's more worried about the bike. 

Steve manages to stick to quiet-enough streets where he can limp his Harley along on the sidewalk without attracting that much attention. He doesn't want to risk the engine by running it, at least not until he reaches the relative safety of his building's parking garage. The sirens race down a street a block or so away, heading the way he came from, and he breathes a sigh of relief — then aborts it, because it makes his ribs sting. Stop breathing so deep, and it doesn't hurt as much. That's simple enough to remember. 

By the time he gets back to his building, the first breath of sunrise is just barely starting to peek through the dark clouds. It reminds him a little of when he'd flown back from California — the first and only time he'd ever been on a plane, since the ramshackle station wagon he and Bucky drove out that way decided to shit itself one final time thirty miles outside of Reno. The cheapest flight back east had been a redeye departing at what-the-hell-o-clock in the morning but it had given them the opportunity to watch a sunrise from 35,000 feet. That's something Steve doesn't think he'll ever see again. 

Maybe he's hit his head a little harder than he thought. He's never been the cheeriest crayon in the box but he's usually nowhere near this morose.

It takes him a second to gather his thoughts once he gets back into his parking spot, complete with discarded license plate. Luckily, the garage was not built to be a garage, but rather a dug-out basement supported by a seemingly random array of metal pillars wrapped in bright yellow padding, so Steve's spot is in somewhat of a back corner where not many of his neighbors will see his half-trashed motorcycle. He chooses to lean it up against the wall and kick the license plate over to it. If anyone asks, he's only gotten into an accident. 

Next time he's taking the rooftops. Daredevil's got the right idea. 

—

Dr. Wilson's office is freezing again. Steve actually remembered to write himself a note about it in his phone on his way out last week, so he's sitting comfortably in long sleeves and a jacket. 

Well, comfort is relative anyway. Steve's no stranger to bumps and bruises but his body is still in that phase of trying to convince him that his "crash" was more traumatic than it really was so at the moment he's really just a big sore spot from head to toe. There's a dinner-plate sized patch in his side that's the worst of it, courtesy of landing hard on his own arm. It's gotten less throbby in the last day or so because he's taken to alternating between short, hot showers and napping flat on his back atop a small hoard of frozen vegetables. 

It's not the first time he's been hurt. It's not even the first time he's crashed his bike. But it  _ is _ the first time he is consciously, actively trying to keep that information from a medical professional. 

Panic seizes him — just for a moment, just long enough for him to question whether or not he'd remembered to take his tracker off Friday night. He lets out a long, painfully slow breath, taking the care not to irritate his biggest bruises.

"So, how was your week, Steve?"

"Good," he nods but it tugs on something in his neck that doesn't want to be tugged on. He covers it by shifting his weight in his chair and leaning heavier on one armrest. Hopefully he looks more comfortable than he feels. "How're you? Study going okay?"

Dr. Wilson pauses for a beat before laughing softly. Maybe the quick turnaround caught him a little off guard. That's good, though — that's what Steve needs, to focus on something other than his own anxiety. "Yeah. We're getting into prime data territory now that's been a couple weeks. Can't say much more than that, though."

"I get it."

"Wanna tell me about your Friday night?"

Steve's heart stutters a beat in his chest like he's heard a record scratch from a 90s sitcom. Something in the back of his head whispers  _ trap _ . He's also desperately hoping that none of this is showing on his face. Traditionally, he's never really been one to keep his cool.

He must be taking too long to answer, because Dr. Wilson is adjusting his laptop screen and clicking his mouse a few times as he offers, "I've got a 0 bpm reading from 2:48 to a little before 7 a.m on Saturday."

The first excuse that flashes through Steve's mind is that the battery died. That seems believable enough, right? Steve knows that the tracker chews through its battery life like his old phone used to. So far it's only lasted him about a day or two at a time. He can't be the only person who's accidentally (or like in his case, "accidentally") let it die over the weekend. 

Dr. Wilson raises an eyebrow at him, and that's how he knows he's been taking too long in his answer. The good doctor's face may look neutral to anyone else, but Steve is both self-centered and paranoid, so his brain is desperately trying to convince him that Wilson is looking right through him. "But the battery died" is a flimsy excuse, it'll never work on somebody this sharp. The guy might as well be a human lie detector. 

A full-fledged confession starts to bubble up from Steve's chest, and he barely swallows it back down. The air conditioner kicks on under the window. 

With a small smile, Wilson chuckles. "It's not the first time somebody's tracker's slipped off while they were asleep. Might help to tighten it up a notch or two in the future."

Steve breaks into a grin. Saved by the good doctor's social graces, he thinks to himself as he chuckles softy. "Yeah. I toss and turn, sometimes."

Dr. Wilson is typing again as they talk. "And how would you rate your sleep? Scale of one to ten."

"Uh," Steve laughs to himself, more nervous than relieved this time, "Not great."

The doctor waits for him to fill the silence in himself. 

"I'm working on it." Steve promises. He fiddles with the tracker on his wrist. 

"So, other than flinging off the tracker, how was your Friday?"

If you had asked Steve, he would've thought that the subject had already moved on, which is why he struggles to come up with a relevant and timely response. "Uh, fine?"

Dr. Wilson looks a little suspicious of that but he looks down to glance over his screen again. "Good to hear." 

Steve fights the urge not to grimace. He feels strange in this office, like the spell of easy, almost friendly conversation between him and Dr. Wilson has been shattered and they're doomed to continue only as untrustworthy study subject and emotionally distant researcher. He should tell Wilson about his hobby. That also seems like the worst possible decision he could make in this moment. 

"Right, let me just finish this up." Dr. Wilson flashes one of those warm, gap-toothed smiles again and Steve swears he feels his bruises start to throb with more vigor. "Anything else I should know for this week?"

"Nope," Steve offers a little too quick as he gingerly lifts himself out of the chair while trying hard to make it look like natural motion. "See you, uh, next Tuesday?"

The doctor nods, still smiling. "Sure hope so."

— 

Once Steve gets home that day he just about bathes himself in ice to ward off the last of the stiffness from the crash. He follows it up with a shower hot enough that he almost feels pleasantly numb as he's toweling off his hair and brushing his teeth. 

The heartbeat tracker looms in the corner of his eye. It's charging, snugly docked into the sink-side outlet usually reserved for his electric razor. The idea that something so small and innocuous could cost him everything he's built over the last year sits uneasily in his gut. 

Or maybe he's just hungry. 

Steve picks through the cereal, rice, oatmeal, and granola bars left in his pantry. He decides on the Chex, but then he opens the fridge and remembers he has no milk because he forgot to go to the store because he's spent the last four days lying on his couch trying not to breathe on his left side and looking up just  _ how _ illegal it is to ride a motorcycle without a license plate. Forgoing the milk, even the bowl and spoon entirely, Steve just scoops handfuls into his mouth as he stands in his kitchen scrolling through twitter. 

Specifically, he's looking for any follow-up about Friday night. So far he hasn't found anything, but truth be told he hasn't been digging very hard. He may have a "right to information" but that doesn't mean that the information he wants is easy or convenient to come by. Also, making a habit of showing himself at the local precinct to request police reports seems a surefire way to get found out. 

Daredevil almost  _ always _ makes twitter, though. Here, alone, eating corn Chex straight out of the box, Steve can admit to himself that he might be the slightest bit jealous. 

Something starts buzzing outside — some determined insect probably trying to force his way through where his window's cracked open. He grabs a tissue and pushes whatever-it-is back outside before shutting the window all the way and locking it. 

Twitter's no good anyway. Oh, but Daredevil's done something amazing over in Hell's Kitchen, there's even a couple blurry mid-leap action photos as he no doubt chases some bigwig hitman across rooftops. 

Steve's not sure if he'll ever work his way up to  _ that _ . But he's gotta start somewhere, right? Soon as he gets over himself and stops whining about his bike getting shot out from under him he'll be able to start focusing more on getting better at what he does. 

Daredevil probably doesn't even need a day job. If he has one at all. 

He wanders to his bedroom door and tosses his phone onto his bed with a sigh. His wrist is strangely empty — he's forgotten to put the tracker back on. Behind him he can see the steady glowing green light from the otherwise dark bathroom. 

"Might help to tighten it up a notch or two in the future", he mutters to himself as he tucks the end into his rubber bands. Thanks, Samuel Wilson, M.D.

If his appointment today had been a job interview, Steve would've gone home and immediately started searching for other open positions. Twice he almost told a legally mandated reporter that he was a wannabe vigilante combing the streets at night. Twice he almost risked everything, because the doctor was  _ nice _ to him. What an idiot. 

That being said, he's probably also not the worst participant in the study. Probably. Hopefully.

Still, now, only hours later, Steve's not entirely sure if he remembers the appointment correctly. He's not sure if Dr. Sam Wilson was eyeing him with active suspicion, if he was feigning interest in order to be polite, or if all of these things are Steve retroactively projecting onto what was actually happening. 

If Wilson had noticed that Steve was hurt he would've asked about it. Right? He's a doctor, that's a significant part of his job, in Steve's opinion. So the fact that he's sitting in his apartment right now could mean one of three things: one, that Steve has suddenly developed a much more believable poker face than the mediocre one he's had his entire life, the one that's led Bucky to thoroughly embarrass him in every card game known to humankind; two, that Sam Wilson is much more apathetic towards his study participants than Steve had first anticipated, meaning he's only being polite for science's sake; or three, that Wilson somehow isn't as smart as the M.D. on his white coat gives him credit for. 

The more Steve thinks about it the more none of them seem true. In fact, they all sound pretty ridiculous.

He throws himself into his unmade bed —  _ carefully _ — and considers keeping the police scanner off tonight. He's exhausted on both a physical and a mental level but the thought of tonight being the night he could've prevented some horrible crime if only he had been there is enough to guilt him into keeping it on.

But on the other hand it's also a very self-centered thought. He's not officially trained in anything that's even remotely relevant, not de-escalation or hand-to-hand, just free YouTube videos on conflict resolution and practicing stunts he thought would be cool to learn. Steve scoops his earbuds up from where they're sitting on his nightstand because all of these tangential thoughts are not leaving him in a great place. It's Tuesday, so a couple of his podcasts have new episodes for him to get through. 

He sets the sleep timer to an hour and closes his eyes.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve can't remember which, but he got a movie from the library once with a bonus feature about how during a stunt sequence one of the actors actually broke something on camera and that ended up being the take that made it in. He thinks he remembers the words "authentic performance" being thrown around — which, yeah, any well-adjusted human being would probably have an _authentic_ reaction to breaking their ankle. Or their arm. Or whatever it was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Canon-typical violence near the end of the chapter.

By Thursday Steve almost feels back to normal. Most of his bruises have faded to a mottled yellow-green, which is good, because some part of his hindbrain was convinced that his side and leg were just going to be stuck like that forever. He's grateful that isn't the case. 

What he's less grateful for is the fact that now he has no excuse to avoid going out. He feels much better, but he's spent almost a week taking it easy and now he's run out of commissions and freelance work, so even his drafting table isn't as much a distraction as he'd like it to be. Instead he busies himself learning how to repair faux leather, which, here's the thing — you really can't, not easily and not cheaply. He's been to nearly every craft store and motorcycle shop in the five boroughs looking for patches and leather paint that match his jacket's specific black. One of the downfalls of working in art, he supposes, is that he's done far too many color studies to accept "close enough". 

At one of the bike shops there's a man named Critter who shows him how to file down the damage and stick the patch on. Steve's jacket isn't real leather, so the grain and sheen of the patch don't exactly match the rest of the material, but Critter works some magic with the file and the leather paint that makes the repair almost invisible if Steve didn't already know that it was there. Critter also refuses when he tries to pay him. Steve insists, but the guy grins and tells him that he can't take money from someone from Steve's generation who actually wants to learn how to treat his gear with respect. Steve takes a business card and thanks him about a dozen times before he leaves.

That night he's sitting in bed with a sketchbook in his lap, trying and failing to have the patience for pointilism while the police scanner fills in background noise. It's playing soft enough for Steve to barely hear the words — sort of on purpose. He hasn't been out since last week, and he's still feeling that strange mix of selfish and guilty for wanting to go back out and do it again. 

He considers calling Bucky but squashes the urge the moment he has the thought. Bucky's newest project is crunching hard right now, so he's probably either still at work or sleeping. Steve hopes he hears back from that indie developer soon so he can get back to having some resemblence of a work-life balance. 

Not that Steve's one to talk, of course. 

A couple of different voices are chattering on the scanner, all calm and collected, just patrols, location reports, et cetera. Steve tosses the sketchbook off his lap and turns the scanner off entirely. 

But then the quiet of it starts to set in. It's nearly enough to drive him up a wall. 

Steve's already halfway to getting his cargo pants on before he even registers what he's doing. The jacket's been hanging on the wall hook where he usually keeps his keys — ostensibly to let the patch and leather paint dry, but by now it's been well over 48 hours so he's really just been avoiding putting it away. He slips it on and zips it up without a second thought.

On his way out the door he considers the mask for a solid thirty seconds. Literally, he's on his way out, with one foot out in the hallway and one in his living room, before he decides he's too far along in the process to risk going all the way into his bedroom and losing the motivation entirely. But a busted bike means he won't be wearing his helmet, so not having any mask at all means he'll have to be careful about how much he stays out of the light. 

Maybe it's a night for the rooftops after all. He steps back into his apartment, locks the front door, and heads right for the fire escape. 

—

Steve can't remember which, but he got a movie from the library once with a bonus feature about how during a stunt sequence one of the actors actually broke something on camera and that ended up being the take that made it in. He thinks he remembers the words "authentic performance" being thrown around — which, yeah, any well-adjusted human being would probably have an  _ authentic _ reaction to breaking their ankle. Or their arm. Or whatever it was. 

This is where his mind goes as he's trying to judge the gaps between the buildings without breaking his momentum. In the beginning it was hard to guess distances on the fly, due to the extent of his depth perception at the time being mostly used for illustration. He's had his fair share of slips, trips, and falls in the past year. More than once he's scared the shit out of some unsuspecting citizen by landing too hard on their fire escape in the wee hours of the morning. 

Stealth is a very big part of it. This is something Steve had almost never considered about vigilantism until he'd tried it for himself. Daredevil must be the stealthiest man alive because it took Steve  _ months _ to figure out how to sprint his way across an uneven rooftop without sounding like a herd of nocturnal elephants. Once he'd accidentally tripped and fell over someone's satelite dish, effectively punting it out of its bracket. In a fit of shame he'd called the only person he could think of — Bucky, who dammit-Jim-I'm-a-UX-dev-not-a-cable-tech'd him to the moon and back for an hour — but to Steve somebody suddenly not getting the satellite TV they expected does in fact fall under the umbrella of "user experience", and after a while the two of them did get it fixed so he doesn't really see what the problem was anyway.

He doesn't have much of a destination in mind as he runs. Tonight feels much more like a practice sort of night than it does anything else. Steve tests this theory by tumbling into a front flip over a generator and nearly stumbles in his shock when he lands it pretty much perfectly. Grinding to a halt, he turns on his heel and charges at it again, vaulting into a side flip. At the last second he remembers not to wrap his arms around his knees and lands with enough momentum to spring into one more flip. 

Steve laughs. 

It's only been recently that he's worked up the nerve to try some of his tricks as he leaps from rooftop to rooftop. Not that there's much padding anywhere to be found up here but if he falls in between the buildings then there's  _ definitely _ nothing to catch him. Except for the concrete two to five stories down, which he'd really prefer not to encounter at that kind of velocity. 

He handsprings over the generator one more time and keeps running. This time it's a new direction, more east than he'd been going before. His internal compass isn't necessarily the best but he's got a halfway decent map of the area burned into his head, and also he's never gotten lost before so he's fairly confident in his ability to find his way back to his apartment. 

The buildings start to have a more consistent height the further he gets from the riverfront. It's good because it means it's that much easier to try new and more dangerous things, but it's also bad because it's  _ so _ tempting to try new and more dangerous things out here. He lands a perfect screwdriver flip — but the moment his feet touch the ground he hears glass shatter. 

At first he thinks it's him. Wouldn't be the first time he's stepped on something up here without meaning to. But when he goes still and immediately hears it again, that's when he feels his heartrate pick up and every fiber of his body go tense. 

Steve creeps to the edge of the roof in the direction he thinks it came from, resisting the urge to crouch or army crawl for fear of being spotted. If Daredevil's taught him anything it's that nobody ever thinks to look up. 

Across the alleyway there's a pair of figures huddled together on the fire escape. They're both dressed in dark clothes, and the larger is helping the smaller in through a broken glass door. Steve cracks his knuckles one at a time. He rolls his wrists too, stretching them the same way he does before he settles down to draw because he's never even attempted to stop a robbery-in-progress before and has no idea what to expect. He really only knows a handful of things about fights: keep your wrists loose, otherwise you'll break them; keep the other guy on the offense, because it's more tiring than defense; and mainly, try to avoid getting in a fight at all. 

Steve's mostly hoping that he can just scare them off. He squares his shoulders and leaps to the next roof, rolling back up to his feet and making his way down the fire escape as silently as he can. Every few steps he stops to listen. 

The broken glass door is on the third floor of a five-story building. It was smashed from the outside, judging by the way the glass is scattered across the hardwood floor. Steve sees the telltale gleam of a camera trained on the door and his blood turns to ice. 

He isn't wearing a mask. He's just trespassed, and he isn't wearing a mask. 

"This way," comes a voice from around the corner to his right as a flashlight clicks on. The beam hits the domed security camera perfectly — empty. It's a decoy. 

Steve tries not to breathe his sigh of relief too heavy. 

If he had to guess, the whole thing looks like an office building, with large hallways, beige walls, fake plants, and a bit of a strange numbering system on the doors. It doesn't make sense to him but he supposes he's not the one it was designed for, so he tries to ignore the numbers in favor of following the voices instead. 

"Could you go any slower?"

"Shut up, man, I gotta listen for the tumblers."

Steve creeps around one corner and then another. They sound close now, close enough for him to peek around the third corner and spot the bigger guy kneeling in front of a door while his buddy berates him.

"Listen, all I'm saying is Paulie could've had this open by now."

"Oh, yeah?" The big guy stands and Steve slinks back, pressing up against the wall. "You wanna give it a try, hotshot?"

"Yeah, I think I will. Hand 'em over."

Steve doesn't know much about lockpicking himself, he's only looked up what he thinks is "safe" enough to keep him off of watchlists or whatever it is the NSA does. He's not really one to believe everything he sees on the internet in the first place anyway, but he can't hesitate too much longer because then these two will likely have whatever they're after. 

Making his way around the corner, he tries to sound as confident as he can. "Didn't realize this would be such a hot spot tonight."

The bigger guy startles first and hurls a curse at Steve. "The fuck are you?"

Steve hesitates, and then immediately sighs inwardly at himself because of  _ course _ he's not going to tell the truth. He musters a suave grin to save face. "I wouldn't think about it too hard."

"What, Donny thinks he can send one guy to do a two-man job?"

The second guy is now standing up too, glancing at his buddy like he's unsure of how to what he's supposed to do with kind of interference. To be fair Steve also doesn't know what exactly is happening either.

"Didn't seem to be much of a question." Steve shrugs. The big guy spits in his direction.

It's only a moment that they're all sort of staring at each other but it's long enough for Steve's mile-a-minute paranoia brain to kick in and present him with a variety of the worst possible outcomes. The police could already be on their way, tipped off by some sort of silent alarm, and he'll be arrested along with the idiots he was trying to stop. He could make it out of here, but maybe he's accidentally gotten himself into some sort of turf war or something that's gonna come back to bite him in the ass or sink him to the bottom of the East River. Maybe he'll lose something important to him, like his jacket, or an arm.

"Listen," Steve says sharply, surprised when they actually seem to be. He fumbles a bit for what to say next as his command of the moment turns sour in the prolonged silence, "If you guys split now, I didn't see anything, yeah?"

It sounds so unlike him that Steve nearly winces as the words come out of his mouth but the two guys seem to be too busy looking at each other to notice. 

"No, we're not gonna just—  _ ugh _ ." The big guy growls, exasperated, and jabs a thick finger in Steve's direction. " _ You're _ gonna get out of here, not us. We were here first."

Like hell. "You know I can't let you through that door."

"What are you gonna do about it," says the smaller guy with a grin. 

Steve rolls his shoulders and tries not to clench his fists tight. There's no one besides them here to see it, but he really doesn't want to be the one to punch first — if he waits for them to come at him, then he's only defending himself. It's a bit pedantic, true, but it helps him to justify it in his head. He can keep a clear conscience even if he stepped through a bit of a loophole on his way there.

"Why don't you come over here and find out?"

The big guy charges — he's so much faster than Steve was ready for, on him like ink on paper. A bare forearm is braced against his collarbone as Steve is driven backwards until his shoulders hit the wall, and before he can put his arms up to block it he's clocked across the face with a right hook that makes his head spin. 

He misses his helmet. It would've been harder to do all his flips earlier with it on, sure, but that's a small price to pay based on how hard his ears are ringing. 

Steve gets a hand up and wraps it around the guy's wrist, holding back another blow long enough to kick at the inside of his knee. With a growl, the guy staggers back, and Steve pushes off the wall as hard as he can to drive his knee into the big man's middle. He doubles over with a wheeze. 

There's not much time to catch his breath through, because a metallic flash seizes Steve's attention as a fucking  _ knife _ sails through the air in his direction. He barely manages to sidestep it in his surprise. It catches him in the gap between the armor on his shoulder and his elbow, slicing clean across his bicep and making him hiss. 

"What the  _ hell _ ?!" He snarls before he can stop it. 

The smaller guy has a cocky grin as he flips a second knife in his hand. "You're the one who asked for it."

By now the big goon has recovered. He grabs Steve by the shoulder to whirl him around but Steve ducks on instinct — the punch whistles over his head and he charges forward, driving his shoulder just above the guy's belt buckle. Big goon gags and tries to kick him in the stomach. Steve tenses and takes it, huffing out a breath when it connects and driving his fist into the guy's side as hard as he can. He's pushed off and stumbles back a step or two when — 

Something cold touches the side of his throat just above his collarbone. Steve tries not to gasp or breathe too hard, because the knife is dangerously close and he can hear the smaller guy's breath hot and gross in his ear. 

Neither of them say anything. No snide comment, no begging on Steve's part, although he's sure knife guy would love for him to plead a little. He glances between his captor and the other guy who's leaning against the wall and panting. They're watching each other, just for a beat or two until the bigger one gives a little nod, like 'go on'. 

Steve snakes his hand up to squeeze the wrist holding the knife as fast as he can and jerks his head back. He feels the guy's nose crack with a sort of grim satisfaction. It's easy enough to wrench the knife out of his grip and step away from the two of them. 

The problem — Steve has a very limited idea of how to properly use a knife in a fight, especially when his goal is to chase these guys off or knock them out. Having a small, sharp, nail-file sized dagger isn't really ta useful tool for either of those outcomes. He brandishes it as intimidatingly as he can while taking a step back. If he won't use it offensively then it should definitely be able to keep the two of them at arm's length.

Behind him is the door the two of them were trying to break in in the first place. The plaque above the doorbell doesn't have a name, just a suite number and a logo Steve doesn't recognize.

"What'sa matter, you've never had a knife fight before?" By now the smaller guy has picked up the other discarded blade and shows off by way of flipping his grip back and forth. 

"Like I said earlier," says Steve, as calmly as he's able, "If you guys get outta here, I didn't see anything. Last chance."

"You don't scare me, pretty boy," growls the big guy, charging forward again. He's using Steve's own move on him to try and slam him into the wall. Steve tries to use his momentum against him, to sidestep and toss the guy away, but by then the goon already has too good a grip on him and they both go tumbling down together. 

They're locked together in no-holds-barred wrestling: the big guy consistently trying for the knife and Steve doing his damnedest to keep it away from him. He grabs Steve's wrist tight and throws it against the ground to make him lose his grip. It works, but Steve gets his feet up high enough to kick him off and the guy goes tumbling backwards.

Steve flips onto his stomach and scrambles after the knife, reaching for it just as a heavy boot  _ slams _ down on his wrist. He grits his teeth tight to keep from crying out. 

The smaller guy leers and grinds the sole of his boot into Steve's arm. "Nice talking with you. Nighty night."

Just as Steve's about to ask what the fuck he's talking about, a strong hand pulls him by the hair and bashes his face into the floor. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Steve climbs back to awareness the first thing he notices is that it feels like someone's dipped half of his face in warm glue. 

When Steve climbs back to awareness the first thing he notices is that it feels like someone's dipped half of his face in warm glue. 

It's very obviously not glue, though, he can smell the blood and the scent stings his nose as he blinks his eyes open. Hardwood floors, beige walls trimmed in white. Fake plants.

The office building, right. He doesn't think he's been out for that long but in all honesty his internal clock has long been ground into dust by his insomnia, so who can say, really. 

His lungs demand more air and his gasp morphs into a groan as his nerves light up with the oxygen.

Where did the two goons go? Holy shit, is he actually alive and they've just — they left him here? No doubt after taking whatever they came in here for, probably, but Steve's just enough of an optimist to not granted his own life for granted. In fact, it's a little disturbing how simple it is for him to accept that it could have just as easily gone the other way. If he had a therapist, they'd probably have a lot to say about that.

But he doesn't, so instead of dwelling on that kind of thing he focuses his attention on getting to his feet. Putting his hands underneath him to push himself up is immediately a failure — something in his left wrist gives and he lands hard on his shoulder with a grunt. _ Shit _. It's his drawing hand but that's also a problem for later. He sets his jaw, clutches his left hand close to his chest, and focuses on slowly getting up via his right side this time. The process is slow-going but he manages to get to his knees and brace himself against the wall to slide up the rest of the way. 

His head is spinning. He almost feels drunk, focusing as hard as he is to keep his balance, and his right ear is ringing so fiercely he can barely hear anything else. 

The door to the office suite is open, he can see that pretty clearly. 

Even as off-kilter as he is, Steve knows his priority has to get out of there before the cops get here. The building itself may have not had any alarms but the company who owns this particular space probably does, and convincing the officers that he was only trying to stop the crime seems like a losing battle. 

Out of the corner of his eye he sees on of the knives buried about a quarter-inch into the armor pad covering the top of his shoulder. Steve has no idea how thick the armor actually is — well, he does, normally he knows but right now his memory's a little fuzzy — but if he's been cut there he can't feel it. He braces himself against the wall to try and wedge the knife out that way. When it pries free, it falls right into his good hand and that's when he gets an idea. 

Steve creeps closer to the open door as quietly as he can, listening. He can hear the two voices from earlier but they're muffled like they're behind a wall or two. Definitely still in there, then. 

Very, _ very _ carefully, Steve reaches in to lock the door from the inside before quietly pulling it shut. He holds his breath a moment — they don't seem to have heard. 

The ringing in his ear has started to subside, so he can't really be all that sure about anything, but he thinks he can hear sirens in the distance. Immediately he freezes again and his heart drops to his stomach when he realizes it's not just his imagination. 

He strikes the top of the doorknob with the hilt of the little knife, again and again and again without caring how loud he's being. He only stops when the knob comes clean off the door.

Gonna make it a hell of a lot harder to pick, anyway.

Steve turns his attention to getting himself out. The hallway is dark, too dark to see almost anything, and it's all Steve can do to hope he hasn't left too much of his own blood on the floor as he tries to hurry back the way he came in. 

The broken glass door seems unoccupied — and better yet, unmonitored — but it's harder than he expects to carefully step over the shards when he only really has use of one of his hands for balance. One of his ankles wavers when he puts too much weight on it and he stumbles into the railing, catching himself with a cough. The sirens are close enough now that he can make out at least two cruisers coming from different directions. 

Suddenly Steve has a decision to make — up or down. 

Up until thirty seconds ago he would've picked rooftops, but if he's really more hurt than he feels then he doesn't trust himself to be able to do the kinds of things he normally does. He's dizzy, exhausted, sore, and his wrist fucking _ hurts _ more than anything else. 

Steve slowly starts to make his way down the fire escape. Well, slowly at first, but the sirens as screaming ever closer and it sparks a panic in him to the point where he slides down the final railing only to barely catch his feet and stagger a few steps deeper into the alleyway. 

He only takes a moment to orient himself. With a deep breath, he straightens his shoulders — _ ow _ — and starts to make his way back west.

—

Somebody's cold fingers are on Steve's neck and he snaps awake. He grasps for whoever it is, trying to push them away but withdrawing when the resistance hurts his wrist, but even when he cracks his eyes open it takes a few moments for the face to swim into focus. 

Brown eyes. Gap-toothed smile. 

His brain isn't entirely thinking in words, but he knows that he knows the person. With a groan, Steve closes his eyes again and leans his head back on — on whatever he's propped up on that's weirdly warm and also digging into his back. 

"Hey, whoa, I need you to stay awake, if you can," says the person. Steve's brain supplies the sound of an air conditioner, which is absolutely not helpful. "Steve?"

"Mm?" It's really the best he can do right now but Steve manages to force his eyes open again. He blinks. 

"You wanna tell me why you're in the trash?"

Hmm. He thinks hard about that and sits up only to wince when something brushes against his cheek. 

Steve doesn't remember being in the trash. He _ does _ remember getting in a fight and his head being smashed into the floor, so maybe that's the reason he doesn't remember getting in the trash. He must've fallen asleep before he could make it all the way home. 

"M'tired." He offers weakly. 

"Yeah, that probably has something to do with the blood on your face." The person is closer now, squatting down to look him in the eye. "You think you can manage some water?"

"Yeah." Steve sits up a little quicker than he should and his stomach immediately protests. His left hand twitches when he moves it so he leaves it be and instead takes the proffered water bottle with his right. Some of it dribbles down his chin a little bit, but the world is spinning too fast for him to be embarrassed or even to begin figuring out the coordination of wiping it away. 

He hands the water bottle back to Dr. Wilson — oh no. 

Steve looks at the doctor with wide eyes. To his credit, Wilson keeps going in the same gentle tone he was before. "Alright, Steve, let's get you to the hospital."

"What?" He tries to shake his head but stops when it makes the spinning that much worse. "No, I — I can't."

"You don't have to walk or anything, they have these neat things called ambulances that'll take you right there."

Steve sighs and sets his jaw as he chews over how best to tell his doctor how absolutely broke he is without sounding to pathetic. "No, I — I don't live far. Just need to, ah, wash my face, maybe wrap my wrist. Good as new."

Dr. Wilson watches him a moment. The look on his face is familiar, it's that borderline suspicion that has sent Steve into several fits of paranoia over the last couple of weeks, but finally, he nods. "Alright, I get it. Can you walk?"

"Yep." Trying to prove his point, Steve pushes himself off the pile of trash and only stumbles a single step before he gets his head on straight. He also sticks his left hand in his jacket pocket to avoid letting on how bad it hurts to move it. "Bet I look like shit, huh?"

"I wasn't gonna say anything." Dr. Wilson takes a step or two away, but stops when he notices that Steve doesn't follow. "You coming?"

Steve … is not entirely sure. It's not that he doesn't trust Wilson — despite his deep negative associations with the medical profession at large, Wilson himself isn't so bad — but Steve has a rough idea of where he is, even what direction he's facing, and to get home he needs to go in the opposite direction as the good doctor. 

"My … my place," he starts, trying to force this thought into the shape of words, "I'm that way."

"Probably further than mine."

That stumps Steve for a second. Then he sees the cloth bag in Wilson's hand, the scrubs he's wearing and realizes that as a doctor, he probably has access to Steve's full address, and as a New Yorker probably has a rough idea of distance between any two points in the area. Steve heard once that in Chicago something is considered close if you can get there in forty-five minutes. 

"I don't wanna be trouble." He says, a little sheepishly. 

Dr. Wilson steps forward and puts a firm hand on Steve's shoulder. "Listen, you can either come with me, or I'm gonna make sure you get to a clinic whether you like it or not."

It sounds like a pretty hollow threat, but Steve figures he's really in no shape to argue.

—

Dr. Wilson's place turns out to be pretty nice — _ and _ pretty close, which Steve is secretly grateful for as he's deposited on the couch and told to stay while the doctor fetches a first aid kit. There's enough family photographs around that Steve figures one of his earliest guesses was right and that Wilson is fantastic with kids. The doctor also has a record player with what looks like a sizable collection, which is also something Steve can definitely appreciate. 

None of his injuries seem to be as bad as he thought, either. Wilson looks as relieved as Steve feels when he declares his wrist bruised to the bone but not broken. The ache in his head is also a mild concussion, which might mess up his sleep schedule (_ ha _) and eating habits for a few days but will also fade over time. 

"So," Dr. Wilson says conversationally, wrapping his left arm in a way that reminds Steve of when Bucky took up boxing, "You're Daredevil."

Steve, who had a cup of water halfway to his mouth, is caught so off-guard that he laughs hard enough to spill a bit of it on himself. "I wish."

The doctor nails him with a look somewhere between concern and outright alarm. 

"I mean, I'm_ not _," Steve says earnestly, "Really, I'm not. I'm not even in that league."

"But … you do Daredevil stuff? Ultimate fighting, it's gotta be something." Wilson gestures to him as a general display of evidence.

Steve winces, but not from pain. "Kinda. Dr. Wilson—"

"You're in my apartment, man, you can call me Sam."

"Sam," Steve amends quickly, and the name sounds far too intimate than he was ready for. He takes a deep breath and continues, "I … know you're probably going to have to report this—"

"What am I reporting?" Wilson says with a ghost and a smirk as he finishes the wrapping.

He thinks over his next words very carefully. No matter how he phrases it in his head, it feels like the end of something. Somebody else knows now — except for Bucky, who pretty much always knew and doesn't even really count — but Steve's not sure if he likes the idea of sharing something he's kept so secret for so long. 

"Whatever it is you're doing, you obviously do well enough to keep from dying, which seems like a big plus." Sam chuckles and it puts Steve a little at ease. "But I won't tell."

Steve narrows his eyes a bit, because even though Sam stopped talking it doesn't feel like the end of the sentence. "You won't tell … ?"

"_ If _you let me in on it."

Whoah. That was absolutely nothing like whatever Steve was expecting him to say. Briefly he has a flashback to him and Bucky as kids dressing up as Batman and Robin, except now it's him and Sam as grown-ass adults in bright green spandex. "So … _ you're _ some kind of ultimate fighter, then."

Sam laughs. "Hell no. But you obviously need the help if you've spent the last two weeks getting the shit beat out of you."

"You noticed."

"I'm a _ doctor _."

Steve hums his agreement, unsure of what to say to that. 

"Think about it this way. Let me in on your operation, and I'll help you stay on the right side of conscious."

It's a long stretch of silence while Steve mulls it over. He supposes at the very least it would be helpful to have someone on his side for this sort of thing. "And you'll keep it to yourself?"

"And I'll keep it to myself."

"Alright then." Steve nods and offers his hand for Sam to take, but then pulls it back. "Wait. Are you blackmailing me right now? Is that what's happening?"

Sam laughs but at least he has the decency to look offended as he takes Steve's hand anyway. "I would never."

—

**[Months Later]**

"If you don't hurry up, I might just leave without you." Sam tries to be firm but he can't help the smile that creeps into his voice. He's standing in Steve's kitchen fully dressed, shoes and jacket and everything, and pointedly looks at his watch when Steve glances over his shoulder. 

"Thought you and the Harley don't 'get along'." His boyfriend is still in his shorts and socks, and stands even though he remains hunched over the drafting table in his living room. "I'm just .. reaching … a stopping point. There we go."

Steve whips around to offer Sam a grin that's part apology and part mischief. Sam crosses his arms and says nothing. 

"Two minutes," says Steve, offering two fingers to drive home the point. The words are barely out of his mouth before he's already in the bedroom with the door half closed. 

Once he's out of earshot Sam lets himself have a little chuckle. Being late to a movie is far from the end of the world — he _ prefers _ not to be stuck on the bike in rush hour traffic, but he'd also gladly pick a Steve so engrossed in his work that he forgets the time over a Steve who spends his mornings picking himself out of dumpsters before finding his way home. 

Steve had insisted on dropping out of the study before he'd even consider making plans for a first date. He was adamant that he didn't want to risk Sam's reputation, which was a sweet thought, but personally Sam had always considered fishing Steve out of a pile of trash behind a Shake Shack to be prime date material, and more importantly done and over with by the time Steve had started getting himself worked up about memorizing Sam's favorite wines.

The theater isn't very far either, but it's a nice day outside and far be it from Sam to deny Steve more time with his bike. It's had to be built back up twice since Sam's known him, once all the way up from what the mechanic had considered "junkable", but Steve threw himself into learning every nut and bolt the same way he charges headfirst into would-be thieves with their eyes on somebody's purse.

"Hey," Steve says in Sam's ear, much closer than expected, and he turns on his heel to find himself being pulled into a kiss. Some of the time Steve can be a bit forceful with it but today isn't one of those days. Sam smiles and tilts his head to return the favor in kind.

Just as he spreads his hands out on Steve's broad sides, the big idiot pulls away with a smile and starts chewing something he'd had tucked into his cheek. 

Sam sighs. "Gum isn't a replacement —"

"I know," nods Steve, "I'll make sure to brush _ after _ I've eaten my weight in popcorn, Doctor."

"That's gross."

Steve is already striding away from him to open the closet and rifle through for whichever jacket he's after. "And yet, you still think I'm cute."

With a laugh, Sam scoops up Steve's keys from where they sit ready on the kitchen counter. "How do you figure?"

"Not my fault you have eyes." Steve turns to face him and holds his arms out as if to present himself.

"Look at that," Sam drawls, dripping with sarcasm, "You really showed those buttons who's boss, matching them up with the right holes like that."

"There's this weird thing I found on the back on the bedroom door," says Steve thoughtfully, stroking his chin, "When you get dressed, it shows you what you look like without having to take one single picture of yourself."

"The bathroom selfie is an _ art _, Rogers."

"You're right, for a second I forgot which one of us was really the artist here." He grins and offers his hand to Sam, who doesn't take it.

"You forget something?"

Steve blanks and starts going through a mental inventory, Sam can tell by the look on his face and is highly amused by it. He can tell exactly when he's hit 'keys' by the way he starts patting down his pockets without trying to be obvious about it.

"Heads up, Nomad." Sam says as he tosses the keyring. His boyfriend catches it with practiced ease.

"That's a copy, Falcon." He offers his hand again. When Sam takes it, Steve uses it as an excuse to pull him close and kiss him again. 

"Now we're _ really _ going to be late."

"You sure I can't convince you to miss a few of the previews?"

Sam chuckles and snatches the keys from him on his way out the door. "I'm sure you'll find a way to miss them somehow. A detour, an accidental wrong turn, something along those lines."

"I'm nothing if not predictable."

"You're a mess, is what you are."

"Your mess."

"Mmhmm." Sam leans up for a kiss of his own before leading his boyfriend out the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > The thing that Steve does with the lock is not a great idea. Steve is not very great at the finer points of vigilante-ing, but he'll probably get better eventually.  
> Fun fact: the epilogue was never in the outlines, drafts, anything. When cinni showed me the second art (!!) and requested a smooch or two, I was extremely motivated to add something soft along those lines!

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is absolutely titled after the Mötley Crüe song of the same name.
> 
> Please make sure to [show cinni's art some love](https://twitter.com/itscinni/status/1186706749472104451?s=20)! Both of the pieces are truly fantastic and I'm so, so grateful that she picked my prompt. 
> 
> If you enjoyed this, please also consider sharing on [twitter](https://twitter.com/vvextant/status/1186868679864180737?s=20) or [tumblr](https://vextant.tumblr.com/post/188532538726/kickstart-my-heart-art-itscinni-words). Thanks for reading!


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